Why I Am Afraid of Obama's Health Care Plan

The health care debate is spinning out of control, and for good cause. The Obama administration has steadfastly refused to give any details, leaving the digging for facts to the opponents who are not hesitant to express their points of view. This is bad for the health care debate because it leaves the Obama administration open to charges of lying and trickery. It would have been better had they had an open and full debate on the positions they espouse rather than give vague details, if any, of a very bad plan.

Add Obama’s intimidation of debate by asking Americans to spy on other Americans and report “fishy” emails, websites, and casual conversations directly to the White House, and it looks bad for him. Add Nancy Pelosi’s comments that the people showing up at town meetings are organized by insurance companies, and it looks even worse for him. All you have to do is to look at the people attending these town meetings on the videos. Many of them are senior citizens who are more aware of what is going on than one would think. When it comes to health care and money, they know a scam when they see one.

Let’s start with the basics. If you believe like I do that anything the government gets involved in will be filled to the brim with bureaucracy, red tape, inefficiencies and corruption, then on its face, the Obama plan is bad news. I agree that there are many parts of the health care system that need fixing, pre-existing conditions being one of them, but this isn’t reform. This is a blatant government takeover in line with Obama and his cronies overtly stated goal to create a single payer health care system ala Canada and Great Britain. This has been the radical left’s goal since Harry Truman. As a nation, we have rejected that approach over and over again. The London Times reported today that the British system is on the verge of collapse, notwithstanding the rationing of British health care.

What makes this even scarier are the comments made by Obama’s chief health care advisors in written editorial comments and books. Ezekiel Emanuel, the physician brother of Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, has written extensively about the life choices curve, and states overtly that it is better social policy to provide health care to the young as opposed to providing health care to the elderly. He views the Hippocratic Oath as a “problem” to a health care plan. Former Senator and tax cheat Tom Dashcle has also written extensively, saying that we don’t need any more new drugs, and that seniors should learn to accept their physical infirmities and ultimately, their demise. And now you know why the town hall meetings are packed with seniors.

Under the Obama plan, should you lose your health insurance, private insurance could not sell you a new policy directly. You would be sent to a clearinghouse where government approved plans would be offered to you by participating insurance companies. The plans, however, would be identical, and payment of benefits under the plans would be subject to guidelines established by the Federal Health Review Board. Included would be concepts of “comparative effectiveness”, which would allow treatments and medications based on cost rather than effect (eliminating expensive experimental treatments) and “cost effectiveness,” which simply looks at whether you are too old to receive certain procedures. In addition, both of these concepts would be looked at in terms of your overall health condition. For example, an overweight person would be denied knee surgery because of the excess weight. This isn’t fiction. This is what is being done in Great Britain currently.

If you want a glimpse of what a government run health care system looks like, look at the Veterans Administration. On many levels, it operates well. On many levels, it is a fiasco. One only has to look at the distances the Vets have to travel for treatment in order to get the picture of what is coming.

Do I believe that it is the “intent” of Obama and his cohorts to establish the kind of system here that I have described above? No, I don’t. But it is the inevitable course of all government programs that would result in this disastrous consequence. You should be concerned. I am.